I know you don’t think so.

I know you stand each morning, lift your face to the mirror and wage silent war on the skin and bones that hold you in this life.

I know you do because I do too.

But you are beautiful.

You are beautiful because of your unrelenting insistence on being utterly, uncompromisingly, completely you. Even when it hurts.

Even when it’s the hardest thing.

You are beautiful because you’re still here. Loving and laughing and bleeding and fighting and falling soft at the end of the day, into whatever space or place or body is your chosen refuge.

Your beauty is mixed with the wind and the way it tangles your hair and reddens your cheeks. It shines from the sun, and your delicate shoulders and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of your nose. It’s your happily ever after daydreams and way your inner badass takes over when she’s needed, even though you’re a good girl at heart.

Your beauty lies in the way you keep on being you. Regardless of how often you’ve been told to be something else.  Regardless of messages given by culture or family or the ghosts of lovers past who have no damn right taking up any space in your heart.

But you? You take in those voices and messages and images and directives. The magazine covers and the headlines that beg you to consider all the ways you could improve if you just squelched that irrepressible spirit for a little bit. The past love who told you in a hundred small and silent ways that you were both too much and not near enough. The rules and regulations that govern just how much you’re permitted to shine before it’s labeled narcissism. You take them all to the ocean and toss them into the current and watch them swirl out to sea.

In a world that requires assimilation, you remaining you is one hell of a wild ride. It’s the craziest thing. It’s the riskiest thing.   It’s the most impossible thing. It’s the most necessary thing.

It’s the most beautiful thing.

It is, in the end, the only thing.

And baby, you are doing one hell of a job.

So on the days when you doubt, on the days when even the moon seems to shine too bright and you long for the safety of shadows. Turn yourself to the light and let it reflect your beauty until you remember to trust in it, if even just for a moment.

And then you go out into this one wild world of ours, and you do whatever you were born to do. Whatever your wild soul leads you to do.  The thing that will make you move into yourself and fill up the space and breathe out the universe.

Make your art. Tell the truth. Take that selfie. Step into yourself. Wear that dress. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that feels like heat and sex and swirls around your legs like the sweet seduction of freedom.

Paint your lips red and your nails black.  Cut off your hair. Take a lover. Leave your lover. Pile everything that matters in the car and just drive high into the mountains until the only sound you hear is your own voice mingled with the calls of the wild things.

Damn the consequences. Even the worst of what you can imagine will figure itself out eventually. And there you will be at the end – standing tall in the midst of it all.

You.  Beautiful, beautiful you.

You take my breath away.
xo

Jeanette

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